The High Court today continued an injunction banning solicitation of information about the proposed identity and whereabouts of Maxine Carr .
Maxine Carr
The media has launched a legal challenge to the injunction.
News Group Newspapers, Associated Newspapers, Guardian Newspapers, the Telegraph Group Ltd and MGN were spearheading the attack on an order granted in private yesterday afternoon by Mr Justice Eady.
On the day that the 27-year-old became a free woman, the interim court order "against the world" banned any details being published of her whereabouts, appearance or movements "until further notice". It could mean that her identity and movements are protected by the courts for the rest of her life.
Any picture, drawing or painting of Carr is also banned as are images of any place or building she may visit. It means that if she was to visit a particular supermarket or hairdressers, the media would be unable to say she had been there, even after she had gone. Journalists, or others, can not even solicit such information.
Internet service providers will also be in breach of the injunction if they know banned information about Carr's new life is being placed on their servers, or if they fail to take "reasonable steps" to prevent it appearing there. However, the order only covers publication in England and Wales, meaning details of Carr's new life could still emerge abroad.
Carr has spent half of a 42 month sentence behind bars after being convicted of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
She provided a false alibi for her then boyfriend, Ian Huntley, by lying to police about her whereabouts on the weekend in August 2002 when he murdered 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire.
She was passed from her Prison Service keepers in to the hands of the National Probation Service who will supervise her on licence.
Today, in an open court hearing, Mr Edward Fitzgerald QC, for Carr, applied to Mr Justice Eady for the injunction to be continued in view of the "immediate and imminent threat" to Carr's life and to ensure that her rehabilitation continued.
The media argued the granting of the injunction breached the Human Rights Act but did not oppose its continuation pending service of the evidence upon which it was based and proper consideration of the matter at a full hearing.
PA